In modern day football the emphasis of academy football is as big as ever, with wages and transfer fees on the rise and limits of foreign players in a squad slowly being enforced.
Also, each club must submit a 25 man squad at the beginning of the season, but any player under-21 does not have to be registered, giving youngsters a chance to work their way into a squad during the season. However, with West Ham I can’t see this happening.
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The Hammers development squad lost 1-0 to my local team Welling United on Saturday afternoon, in a game that would usually see the likes of Freddie Piquionne, Rob Hall and Blair Turgott amongst others, however they are not available to Ian Hendon over pre season due to first team or other commitments.
Also on Saturday, West Ham under-18’s lost narrowly away at Everton, making me wonder,what level is our development squad really at?
Any player18 or under is with the academy team on Merseyside and with Hall, Turgott, Moncur etc in Germany making up a second string XI, surely any of the current Development squad aren’t going to make it at West Ham if not selected for that?
Freddie Sears was the brightest spark our academy has produced since James Tomkins and the new Colchester centre forward, who turns 23 this year, proved he wasn’t a Championship standard player, let alone Premier League.
Yet he was in the Development squad last season?
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It seems tome this squad is full of players 19 or above who simply aren’t and won’t be good enough to represent West Ham in the near future. This is quite a sad though.
The fact that Sam Allardyce is looking at Colin Kazim-Richards to add width the Irons midfield, even though we have Rob Hall, a lad who David Gold described as the most exciting player at the club last year, who will probably settle back into this Development side or look for a loan move away from Upton Park once preseason is over.
The point I’m making is – Are there any players in the Development squad that can realistically play in the Premier League?
If the majority of players are 20 or 21 years old, surely they should have made a small impact by now?
Nowadays players don’t make their first team debut at the age of 23, 24, it just doesn’t happen.
Wolves have taken a punt on former Hammers youngster Frank Nouble and the much talked about reserve team players Cristian Montano and Marek Stech were both released. Is it a worrying time for our development and the set up behind the scenes? What is the point of having these 15-20 players making up the reserve team week in week out if we know they aren’t good enough?
Perhaps this current generation just isn’t a decent standard and Rob Hall stands out as being the best of a bad bunch, but for a club who prides itself on its newly appointed category 1 academy, Tony Carr and co may be slightly surprised at the lack of quality currently being produced in East London.
Should we give players like Hall and Turgott a chance in the first team?
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